THIRTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT. 45 



it or not, is a dollar and cents question between you and the nurseryman. 

 But if you can buy a tree one or two years of age, and cut them down and 

 prune the roots well, and plant them out in the nursery row, the trees per- 

 haps a foot apart in a row and rows six feet or more apart, and feed them 

 thoroughly well, and train them into something of the shape you want, and 

 grow them there a couple of years, and then dig them up, top and root prune 

 them, and plant them over again and grow them another two years in the 

 nursery, you will have the ideal trees for making an apple orchard, and you 

 won't put in any poor trees where you always want a good one. That means 

 thinking four to six years ahead to get your apple trees in line. The finest 

 apple orchards I have seen in America, in a small way, have been built 

 along these lines, and I practice it myself to some extent; and I am well 

 satisfied there is no use in fooling with trees out in a lot 40 feet apart each 

 way, when for the first few years you can take care of them on a few square 

 rods instead of acres. 



We have come to the day of low-headed trees. There is no question about 

 that, our trees must be down near the ground where we can get at them. 

 There are so many things necessary to the production, to the manufacture — 

 I used that word manufacture this morning, and I want to use it again, 

 and you have got to continue to use it when you think about the manufactur- 

 ing of fruits; this process must go on right under our eyes and under the 

 touch of our fingers, and the easier we can get the tree and the plant where 

 we can look at it and where we can handle it over and put it into shape, 

 the more economical will be our protection; and the one great item that 

 enters into all production in America is the labor. I don't know as the labor 

 problem has hit you here in Michigan; but can you get all the good help 

 you want, at a moderate price, any time you want it? If j^ou can, it is the 

 only part of America that can do it. No, the labor problem in the orchard 

 is a serious one, and I can't afford to pay men $1.25 or SI. 50 a day to climb 

 up a 20-foot ladder to spray or to prune or to thin or to harvest fruit, when 

 they can do four to eight times as much standing on the ground. It is the 

 expense account that must be kept down if we are to make a profit in any 

 manufacturing business. I heard a traveling man on the road say yesterday 

 there was no profits made in selling goods; it was in buying them; the profits 

 made in business now were in 3^our buying. Now you are buying apples, 

 in a way, before you can get them to sell you have got to buy them from 

 the land; you have got to furnish trees labor and materials and fertilizers, 

 and every other expense that enters there production, and every penny 

 you can cut out and yet increase the quality and quantity of production 

 is the profitable penny to 3^ou. 



So, then, our trees must first be annually pruned. I won't go into details 

 of pruning trees, but they must be annually pruned, to a greater or less extent; 

 they must be annually sprayed, as the good professor has told you here, 

 at least three times; I would say probably the fine apple grower of the future 

 will make it six or eight times. Some people like to cut it down to twice, 

 most of them to once, and some never do it at all; but the profitable apple 

 orchard of the future is going to be sprayed six to eight times; and if the 

 tree is down close to the ground it can be sprayed most economically. 



Saturday, before I left home, I had two men with knapsack sprayers — 

 not power sprayers; well, it was Italian power; but, "by the power of Mike 

 Kelly," it was good! They were eight-year-old trees, but they were low- 

 headed and close pruned; and the most economical thing for us to do at 

 that time was to give those men knapsack sprayers and let them go out there 



